5:42 PM
China's 5th (out of a planned 30 or more) Beidou orbiter was launched into space yesterday, moving them closer to getting their version of GPS running. Both China and Russia are getting their own versions of GPS into space and Europe is planning to do the same:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/latest-launch-brings-china-closer-to-gps-of-its-own/
The US military has had a difficult time getting enough skilled translators in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sometimes translators may have ulterior motives. NIST (funded by DARPA) is now testing a real-time translation system that enables 2-way conversation via text-to-speech technology using smartphones (one article said those were Google's Nexus One phones, but I haven't seen confirmation):
http://www.nist.gov/mel/isd/language_072110.cfm
The US may soon have no need for water-boarding or any other interrogation technique to extract information from terrorists or terrorism suspects because researchers have been able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with *100%* accuracy in the lab. This technology could scan the brain of a terrorist and find out how, when, and where the next attack will occur without any harm to the subject:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/end-water-boarding-using-brain-waves-reading-terrorists-minds-about-imminent-attacks
Retired General who was the head of the CIA and the NSA warned that the US's "cyber flank" was exposed and the US was losing clout to influence rules of war on the Internet. He also pointed out that no country has promised to refrain from cyber spying, saying "Quit whining, act like a man and defend yourself":
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jy16bC0-og0TgT9-IZXcze1eaApg
Security experts demonstrated how the world's high-tech locks can be defeated by such simple measures as pushing a paper clip into a key slot! Lock picking is of great interest to hackers and none of the latest high-tech measures seems to have been developed properly:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gqbsdBcYfpKPMDNmlAO4-KXiAqcA
Stanford engineers came up with a new process that simultaneously combines the light and the heat of solar radiation to generate electricity that can be more than twice as efficient as current solar technology. This could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/new-solar-method-080210.html
Russian regulator has revoked permission to use some frequencies issued for WiMAX to build LTE networks--Yota has been banned from using 20-30 MHz in major cities in Russia including Moscow and St. Petersburg:
http://lteworld.org/news/yotas-lte-frequencies-revoked-lte-plan-unchanged
Motorola has been selected to build a 700 MHz LTE system for public safety agencies in the Bay Area. The Public Safety LTE system will be installed this year and should be operational in early 2011:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/san-francisco-bay-area-selects-motorola-nations-first-public-safety-700-mhz-lte-broad#ixzz0vSimnxTx
Smartphone sales worldwide were up 64% between Q2 2010 when compared with Q2 2009. Android smartphone sales were up *866%* when compared with last year. The US smartphone market was up 41% this year and is the largest smarphone market in the world (23% of all worldwide smartphone sales were in the US), with Android for the first time becoming the largest smartphone platform in the US due to its 851% domestic growth:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/android-smart-phone-shipments-grow-886-year-year-q2-2010#ixzz0vT9Uk0SL
According to Canalys, Symbian OS had 38% market share worldwide in Q2 (41% year-on-year growth), Android had 23% market share (884% growth), BlackBerry OS had 18% market share (41% growth) and iOS had 13% market share (61% growth):
http://www.canalys.com/pr/2010/r2010081.html
Nielsen shows the quarterly sales for each operating system over the past year and it is interesting to see the lines going downwards (iPhone, RIM, Windows Mobile, Palm, etc.) except for the line for Android soaring upwards since Q4 of last year (when the Motorola Droid came out). One excellent note for the iPhone is that 89% of iPhone owners want to get an iPhone next, much higher than the loyalty rates for Android (71%) and BlackBerry (42%). Having 21% of Android users want the iPhone seems to indicate a problem for Apple being only on AT&T...having 58% of BlackBerry users planning to get a non-BlackBerry next indicates that RIM has a big problem:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-soars-but-iphone-still-most-desired-as-smartphones-grab-25-of-u-s-mobile-market/
Intomobile claims to have gotten an exclusive leak for Verizon's LTE roadmap, and the documents they obtained says that Verizon is ahead of schedule for their LTE build-out (instead of covering 100 million people with LTE by the end of the year they say Verizon will cover 115-120 million). The roadmap also contains the interesting tidbit that 4G will be included in the data plan--the $30 data plan will have unlimited 3G data and 5 GB of 4G data per month:
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/30/verizon-going-live-with-lte-this-year-3g-4g-phones-on-the-way/
RIM is releasing their new BlackBerry 9800 smartphone, running their new operating system, exclusively on AT&T. Normally RIM has been closely tied with Verizon, but analysts say that RIM may have turned to AT&T because Verizon has close ties with Google/Android. Another analyst says that RIM needs to be able to get AT&T customers to choose their new device over the iPhone:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3019680220100802
RIM is apparently going to release a tablet computer in November called the "Blackpad" to compete with Apple's iPad. It will enable Blackpad users to connect to the internet via their BlackBerry smartphones. RIM wants to sell the Blackpads for the same price as Apple sells the iPads...but with so little apps for the Blackpad, I doubt consumers will be interested so they seem to be targeting this for the enterprise:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-30/rim-is-said-to-plan-tablet-computer-for-november-to-take-on-apple-s-ipad.html
Apple removed the videos from their site that they said showed that other smartphones had the same antenna issues as the iPhone 4:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20012299-71.html
Intel may be buying Infineon's wireless chip business for anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion. Infineon makes baseband chips for the iPhone 4 and iPad and also makes chips for Nokia, RIM, Samsung, and others. The funny thing about this is that this is the communication chip business that Intel sold to Marvell in 2006, and now Intel will be buying it back from Infineon:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/report-intel-closing-infineons-wireless-chip-business/2010-08-02
Mississippi investigators arrested 2 men that wrapped blocks of wood in duct tape and bubble wrap, attached Toshiba labels, and tried to pass them off as laptops! They also tried to fill binders with paper and pass them off as computers. These "geniuses" were caught when they tried to sell the fake laptops to an off-duty state trooper:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/31/ap/strange/main6732059.shtml
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/latest-launch-brings-china-closer-to-gps-of-its-own/
The US military has had a difficult time getting enough skilled translators in Afghanistan and Iraq, and sometimes translators may have ulterior motives. NIST (funded by DARPA) is now testing a real-time translation system that enables 2-way conversation via text-to-speech technology using smartphones (one article said those were Google's Nexus One phones, but I haven't seen confirmation):
http://www.nist.gov/mel/isd/language_072110.cfm
The US may soon have no need for water-boarding or any other interrogation technique to extract information from terrorists or terrorism suspects because researchers have been able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with *100%* accuracy in the lab. This technology could scan the brain of a terrorist and find out how, when, and where the next attack will occur without any harm to the subject:
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/end-water-boarding-using-brain-waves-reading-terrorists-minds-about-imminent-attacks
Retired General who was the head of the CIA and the NSA warned that the US's "cyber flank" was exposed and the US was losing clout to influence rules of war on the Internet. He also pointed out that no country has promised to refrain from cyber spying, saying "Quit whining, act like a man and defend yourself":
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jy16bC0-og0TgT9-IZXcze1eaApg
Security experts demonstrated how the world's high-tech locks can be defeated by such simple measures as pushing a paper clip into a key slot! Lock picking is of great interest to hackers and none of the latest high-tech measures seems to have been developed properly:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gqbsdBcYfpKPMDNmlAO4-KXiAqcA
Stanford engineers came up with a new process that simultaneously combines the light and the heat of solar radiation to generate electricity that can be more than twice as efficient as current solar technology. This could reduce the costs of solar energy production enough for it to compete with oil as an energy source:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/new-solar-method-080210.html
Russian regulator has revoked permission to use some frequencies issued for WiMAX to build LTE networks--Yota has been banned from using 20-30 MHz in major cities in Russia including Moscow and St. Petersburg:
http://lteworld.org/news/yotas-lte-frequencies-revoked-lte-plan-unchanged
Motorola has been selected to build a 700 MHz LTE system for public safety agencies in the Bay Area. The Public Safety LTE system will be installed this year and should be operational in early 2011:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/san-francisco-bay-area-selects-motorola-nations-first-public-safety-700-mhz-lte-broad#ixzz0vSimnxTx
Smartphone sales worldwide were up 64% between Q2 2010 when compared with Q2 2009. Android smartphone sales were up *866%* when compared with last year. The US smartphone market was up 41% this year and is the largest smarphone market in the world (23% of all worldwide smartphone sales were in the US), with Android for the first time becoming the largest smartphone platform in the US due to its 851% domestic growth:
http://www.fiercemobilecontent.com/press-releases/android-smart-phone-shipments-grow-886-year-year-q2-2010#ixzz0vT9Uk0SL
According to Canalys, Symbian OS had 38% market share worldwide in Q2 (41% year-on-year growth), Android had 23% market share (884% growth), BlackBerry OS had 18% market share (41% growth) and iOS had 13% market share (61% growth):
http://www.canalys.com/pr/2010/r2010081.html
Nielsen shows the quarterly sales for each operating system over the past year and it is interesting to see the lines going downwards (iPhone, RIM, Windows Mobile, Palm, etc.) except for the line for Android soaring upwards since Q4 of last year (when the Motorola Droid came out). One excellent note for the iPhone is that 89% of iPhone owners want to get an iPhone next, much higher than the loyalty rates for Android (71%) and BlackBerry (42%). Having 21% of Android users want the iPhone seems to indicate a problem for Apple being only on AT&T...having 58% of BlackBerry users planning to get a non-BlackBerry next indicates that RIM has a big problem:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/android-soars-but-iphone-still-most-desired-as-smartphones-grab-25-of-u-s-mobile-market/
Intomobile claims to have gotten an exclusive leak for Verizon's LTE roadmap, and the documents they obtained says that Verizon is ahead of schedule for their LTE build-out (instead of covering 100 million people with LTE by the end of the year they say Verizon will cover 115-120 million). The roadmap also contains the interesting tidbit that 4G will be included in the data plan--the $30 data plan will have unlimited 3G data and 5 GB of 4G data per month:
http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/30/verizon-going-live-with-lte-this-year-3g-4g-phones-on-the-way/
RIM is releasing their new BlackBerry 9800 smartphone, running their new operating system, exclusively on AT&T. Normally RIM has been closely tied with Verizon, but analysts say that RIM may have turned to AT&T because Verizon has close ties with Google/Android. Another analyst says that RIM needs to be able to get AT&T customers to choose their new device over the iPhone:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN3019680220100802
RIM is apparently going to release a tablet computer in November called the "Blackpad" to compete with Apple's iPad. It will enable Blackpad users to connect to the internet via their BlackBerry smartphones. RIM wants to sell the Blackpads for the same price as Apple sells the iPads...but with so little apps for the Blackpad, I doubt consumers will be interested so they seem to be targeting this for the enterprise:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-30/rim-is-said-to-plan-tablet-computer-for-november-to-take-on-apple-s-ipad.html
Apple removed the videos from their site that they said showed that other smartphones had the same antenna issues as the iPhone 4:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20012299-71.html
Intel may be buying Infineon's wireless chip business for anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion. Infineon makes baseband chips for the iPhone 4 and iPad and also makes chips for Nokia, RIM, Samsung, and others. The funny thing about this is that this is the communication chip business that Intel sold to Marvell in 2006, and now Intel will be buying it back from Infineon:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/report-intel-closing-infineons-wireless-chip-business/2010-08-02
Mississippi investigators arrested 2 men that wrapped blocks of wood in duct tape and bubble wrap, attached Toshiba labels, and tried to pass them off as laptops! They also tried to fill binders with paper and pass them off as computers. These "geniuses" were caught when they tried to sell the fake laptops to an off-duty state trooper:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/31/ap/strange/main6732059.shtml